Suffer the Night: a horror experience with puzzles

Suffer the Night is an indie survival horror game with some new bright ideas happening in a familiar setting. What that seems in first like the typical home alone situation in a rainy night with an unnatural demonic killer lurking in the shadows, soon turns into a dungeon crawling experience filled with puzzles which is both a nice surprise and a mistake.

The game starts just like any modern horror movie. Your character, a young girl called Stacy wakes up in the middle of a thunderstorm in a huge, isolated house where strange things start happening. The power is cut, telephone lines are down and there goes without saying that you are forced to step out of the house.

However, Suffer the Night soon kind of distances itself from the atmosphere you expect, not that there is anything wrong with using cliches. The unholy killer, called Mr Tops is not really interested in killing you, not in the way you might except. All he wants from you is to finish a game, a text-based adventure one on a floppy disk. Do you have what it takes to finish the game?

Step into the world of Suffer the Night, literally

Playing a creepy text-based adventure game which, your life depends on finishing it and all of these while a horrifying villain crawls in your bedroom is like the true definition of horror. This little introduction is where Suffer the Night shines the best. But unfortunately, the game turns into a repetitive dungeon crawling puzzle solving shooter which it has its own flaws.

After finishing the game, you sign a book which is like the famous story of making a pact with the devil. Now you are thrown into the world of the text-based game you were playing. The idea is great, but the implantation? Let’s talk about that.

Too long, too easy

While transporting into the world of a scary game which you just have been playing it, sounds like a much horrifying experience, the horror aspect of the game almost ceases to exist. From now on, there are just few weird looking creatures to shoot, easy puzzles to solve and death traps to avoid.

There are sections of the game which are unnecessarily long and repetitive and most puzzles are both easy and similar in design. The are still surprises on the way and honestly Suffer the Night excels at almost any other areas especially with voice acting which is nothing you would expect from an indie title.

The story itself is both thrilling and interesting, which keeps you playing and having different endings based on your attention to detail and environment is a great idea.

Horror games and streaming, the perfect match

With all its shortcomings, Suffer the Night is a very short (2 to 3 hours) horror game which benefits from a decent story, and it’s filled with puzzles. The scary theme is enough for attracting viewers and the puzzles provide an opportunity for the engagement and interaction between the streamer and the viewers.

However, this is also a story-based game with almost no added bonus for the next playthroughs, so long story short, it’s a one-time streaming experience.

Pedram Bahadori